


gym

by MathConcepts



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: BAMF Copley, BAMF Quynh, Booker can have a little BAMF-ery, Booker drinks respect Quynh juice, Booker's background angst, Digital Art, Gen, Illustrations, Implied Sexual Content, In more ways than one, M/M, Mission Fic, Quynh using a modern bow can be the hottest thing, Sexual Humor, Sort Of, Stealth Mission, as a treat, bits of character Lore, it's coherent I promise, pardon my french, quynh is a little shit, references to blowjobs, some bow related violence and injury, two plots running hand in hand, uncomfortably detailed descriptions of weapons and clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:13:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26208490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathConcepts/pseuds/MathConcepts
Summary: Gyms and bows and training oh my! A mission, a sparring match and rubber flooring. Booker realizes some important things about certain people, learns the merits of an in-house gym, and also learns that after all these years, Quynh is still a pro with her favorite weapon.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/James Copley
Comments: 9
Kudos: 84





	gym

**Author's Note:**

> You get illustrations in this one, because I am horny for Quynh in a "battle outfit" and gym clothes and had to draw both.
> 
> I also apologize for particular bit of French that Booker says near the halfway mark, and you can plug it into Google translate yourself.

"This one is not even." Quynh says, tapping the floor with a a bare foot. Booker levels a dark look at her from where he is tacking down the last of the rubber floor matting, a hairsbreadth away from throwing all self-preservation to the winds and telling her he does not give a single solitary _fuck_. Fortunately, he's coming to have more respect for life, so he keeps his mouth shut, gets up and stomps over to fix whatever nonexistent problem she's complaining about.   
  
He blames Copley for all of this, because only if the man had kept mum and not indulged Quynh's curiosity, Booker might not be converting the downstairs parlour into a home-gym.  
  
  
  
  
The question comes up one (ha, it's England) rainy day, there's cocoa on the stove and and he and Quynh are alternating between watching the Great British Bakeoff and perusing the files for their newest job, while Copley is taking the time to catch up on some minor chores and every so often takes a moment to critique a contestant's choices.  
  
"We'll need a sniper for this." Booker concludes, clicking to open a street view of the building he's been staring at for half an hour.  
  
Quynh, stretched out lengthwise across the couch and crowding him into the corner with her impeccably painted toes, waves a hand in the air, the signal to _show me,_ and he tilts the laptop screen back and and holds it up for her so she can see the hotel in question. There's no buildings neighboring the hotel, which makes things tricky, as a sniper is usually better off adjacent than in the same linear space as their target, but a strategically placed sharpshooter on one of the hotel floors, more specifically the third floor, on the second balcony to the left, would provide them a distinct advantage.   
  
It's times like this when he misses Nicky, more so than usual. Qyunh is the best shot out of them all, but he wonders about her ability to get in a headshot, from that distance and with the inevitable variables. She scans the photo, narrows her eyes like she knows what he's thinking, which _yes_ , she probably does. She's _Quynh_.  
  
"I can do it." she says, almost dismissively.  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
Copley isn't saying anything, but has two ears open, waiting for her answer. He's the one backing the damn mission, so he's responsible for pasting everything together once they figure their shit out. Which means he's very invested in knowing if Quynh will need a sniper rifle or not.  
  
It seems Quynh has other ideas, she pushes herself up and leans on her elbow, and mimes drawing something back, an answer to Booker's question and Copley's unspoken one. It takes Booker a minute to work it out.   
  
_Bow and arrow_ , a weapon for long distances. Requires one to have a good eye and impeccable aim. Also, strong shoulders. Well, she appears to have all the qualifications. It also explains why she is the best shot they have. Andy had never spoke much about Quynh, let alone her weapon of choice, which Booker had no idea was a bow until this moment. Oh course, if he had been a little less drunk and bit more observant in years past, he might have realized who the archery paraphernalia in Andy's various hidey-holes belonged to.  
  
Ah, fuck. Well, spilled milk and all that. The whole fucking carton. Copley seems to make mental note about that rifle and goes on rearranging his vintage Britannica.  
  
One qualm though, Quynh is vibrant and energetic, Quynh, a patient woman is not. And a sniper requires a rather intense level of patience. He phrases this as delicately as he knows how to to Quynh, who grins pertly at him, showing just a bit too much of her teeth.   
  
  
"I waited _five hundred years_. What's a few hours?"  
  
 _Right_. He goes back to looking through the files to save face, but from Quynh's snickering, he isn't saving much of anything. Living with Quynh means alternating in spades between adoring her and wanting to tear his own hair out. She's _crazy_ , _wonderful_ , and when she laughs a deeper understanding of Andy's grief needles him. He's fallen hard and fast for this long-lost sister of his in so short a time, and to imagine Andy - who'd known and loved her for much, so, so much longer than him - losing her, _losing_ this spectacular woman, makes him shudder in horror.  
  
  
And if he can't can't bear to imagine never seeing her again, then what...then how did Andy....fuck, _how?_  
  
 _What would you know of the weight of all those years alone?_ he had said, but it turns out, it was him who didn't know. He's barely beginning to.  
  
"If he brings more than two or three of his men with him we could have a problem," he says some five minutes later when he's ready to reintegrate back into civilization, the _he_ being their target.  
  
"If it comes to hand to hand, keep it in the building." Copley tells him, as practical as ever. He can lie with the best of them, right up there next to any politician ever, but graphic violence in public view takes a bit more effort to spin.   
  
Booker shrugs, decides to be flippant. "I could use the exercise, I haven't sparred in years." _Strike fucking one_.  
  
"Don't you...doesn't the team train?" Copley asks.  
  
He idly shakes his head, scrolls down a few pictures. "We don't really see the need to." _Strike fucking two._  
  
"I would have thought a team like yours would have a...rigorous training regimen."  
  
Well, not quite. They train - _trained_ , yes, out of boredom or the desire to hone certain favored skills, but by now the combat forms, weapons handling, and all the various tips and tricks that are crucial to the commando-guerilla missions they tended to take were already ingrained in them to the point of being of synonymous with their limbs. And with perpetually healing bodies that remain on the apex of fitness, there's no need to train unless one wants muscle definition.  
  
"...Not really." _And three. Fuck._ Quynh scoffs, and that's the moment he learns that aside from a obsessive interest in fashion, Quynh is a fucking health nut. He's been privy to her doing some ancient variation of yoga and what may or may not be a seven-hundred-year old kata everyday in the morning, but he's never put two and two together. "Do _you_ train? You're ex-CIA." he asks at Copley, desperate to _divert, divert_.  
  
  
The ex-CIA agent, who is now dusting on the other side of room, looks over at them, pausing with the duster over the head of a bronze bust, giving it the appearance of wearing a feathery hat. "I was never out in the field much, they kept me for desk work. I was more useful to them behind a screen." He resumes dusting, encasing the bust in a flurry of synthetic feathers.  
  
"But they trained you, yes?" Quynh insists, stretching her leg out to poke Booker in the ribs with her toes. She knows what he's trying to do.  
  
"I did undergo the basic combat training." The bust is now sparkling. Copley bends down to pick up a stray feather.  
  
"So you can fight?"   
  
"If have to."  
  
Quynh smiles, vindicated. "We should all train. Maybe spar."  
  
And Booker decides he needs to put an end to this, now. He's by no means lazy, but likes doing exactly what he's doing at the moment, sitting on his ass and staring at Copley's while the tv buzzes the nonsense of the hour. He sets the laptop aside, laughs.  
  
"What, here?" He gestures around, at the house that is definitely not decorated to sustain Quynh - or anyone, Copley owns _three_ Ming vases to date for starters - handing him that aforementioned ass. "We'd have to convert a room into a gym."   
  
  
But Quynh, in true Quynh fashion, looks him straight in the eye and takes him at his word.  
  
"Okay, we will."  
  
She's fucking with him, he _knows_ she's fucking with him, and for all that he has ever tried to fuck with her back, he never takes a victory. Like Andy and Nicky and their third-wheel Baklava. Still doesn't mean he won't keep trying. Along those lines, he really should have spiked his cup of cocoa when her back was turned in the kitchen, because he's just made life so much harder for himself.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Which brings them back to where they are now, renovating. Or he is. Quynh is off stretching on the matting he's already installed, in leggings and a strappy top, priming for when he finishes.  
  
  
It's not much yet, just rubber flooring - why does Copley have this much rubber flooring in his garage again? - Qyunh's brightly colored yoga mats and a bench hijacked from the piano upstairs, but Quynh is pleased.

He looks over at Copley, who has rolled up his shirt sleeves and taken off his shoes, but that seems to be the extent of his concession to Quynh's plans. He doesn't look like a man preparing to do extensive physical exercise, which gives Booker some hope for the direction of things.  
  
Quynh pairs them off to spar, she hasn't completed her routine yet, and she wants to see what they have to offer. Booker takes a stance in good humor - he expects they'll throw a few punches, then talk their way out of it -  
  
  
\- what he isn't expecting is for Copley to sweep his legs out from under him in one swift kick and lay him flat out on his back with ease. He blinks up at the other man, speechless in surprise. Quynh is laughing the background, and he tilts his head back to glare at her. " _Merde_ ," he groans, and then in English, "What the _fuck_?" because he's currently on his ass right now, and would very much like to know how he got there.   
  
Copley grins down at him, hands in his pockets and he may think he's hiding it, but he's clearly as smug as a cat in the cream. Now, Booker may be coming to care deeply about this man, and he may have disagreed strongly with the idea of this home-gym-training-session, but he'll be damned if anyone gets away with anymore fuckery today.  
  
  
He rolls onto his feet and shakes himself out, taking up a stance in earnest. Quynh's eyes are on his back now, but Copley is still grinning at him, and as he only has room for one of them, he settles for keeping a weather eye on Quynh.   
  
Which, mistake, _mistake_.

He realizes when Copley is straddling him a few minutes later, pinning him to the mats with a forearm on his throat, that this type of outcome was possibly what Quynh had been hoping for all along when she paired them off. That, and Copley has spent more time in the field and less time pushing pencils than he's trying to make it seem like. He can fight, and certainly win, as evidenced by their current position. Which apparently Quynh knew.   
  
Booker's style has always been a rough-and-ready, though he's limber enough use speed over strength to his advantage. Copley spars with a stylized smoothness, a block, feint and parry approach. Either way, Booker is on his back (again) with Copley on top of him, a very prominent weight on his lower half. And suddenly he isn't thinking about fighting styles anymore.   
  
He slaps the mat open-palmed and Copley eases off him. "Are you okay? Do you need -" he shakes his head and sits up for enough leverage to push Copley back, so he's half lying, propped up on his elbows, his knees drawn up.  
  
" _Je veux m'étouffer sur ta bite_." he says, knocking Copley legs apart and crawling up between them. One thing he'd almost forgotten about himself, is that a good fight gets him going. It always flustered -though not bothered - his poor wife, who had to balance between tending to the various injuries acquired in the scuffle of the night and reacting to his advances.   
  
...Shit, he hadn't wanted to go there. Especially not _now_. He breathes slowly, undoes the catch on Copley's slacks and successfully clears his mind enough to get on with what he started. Copley's hand slips into his hair as he sets to work, and it's a while before either of them remember Quynh is still there.  
  
  


  
  
The day of the mission rolls around a few days later, most those days having been spent fending off Quynh's repeated demands to make use of the budding gym. Copley, who's been off making last minute preparations for the better part of the afternoon, comes back to present Quynh with what he says was the best he can do at such short notice. It occurs to him that he and Copley have very different ideas about what constitutes as something done at 'short notice' when he sees what he's brought to Quynh.  
  
It's a bow, in a long black case. Somewhere between now and the rise of their do it yourself-gym, Quynh had asked him to find her that particular weapon, and he'd come through.  
  
Booker, who knows fuckall about archery - he'd entered the picture when bayonets were in fashion, and archery as a leisure activity was discouraged by unspoken consensus - knows she can do damage with that. It's a stripped down tactical recurve, Copley explains, the bare frame without the scopes and gadgets that are sometimes on modern bows and bows used in combat. Quynh had wanted something basic.  
  
Though it's not the bow, per say, but the way Quynh handles it that makes him so sure of that.  
  
"It'll do." she says, tracing down the frame with a single finger before lifting it out of the case it was brought in, it's jet black and slender, and in her hands it looks _wicked_. With it comes a - also black - plastic and canvas quiver full of carbon arrows, which Quynh isn't impressed with, but the arrows that she would prefer, wood and feather and bone, at the quality she would prefer, aren't readily available.  
  
  
She thanks Copley and carts her new toy off to her room so she can change for the mission, although Copley provides them with any equipment that they need, Quynh is not one for tac gear, she finds it uncomfortable and unfashionable.   
  
Booker, who has given up on fashion sometime during the sixties, prefers unmarked military fatigues and the occasional Kevlar when he's on a job. He hasn't quite yet managed to break the need for protection, the rest of the team only wear gear for the aesthetic, and after all, they are warriors and they dress like it on the field.   
  
He's sitting with his feet up on an ottoman, lacing his boots, when Quynh trots back in, at first glance looking like the leading lady in a Bond film. She's belted and zippered into a double-breasted jacket, pricey jeans tucked into high leather boots, and her hair is pinned up. Everything is in varying shades of black, except for the top of her red turtleneck which peeks out above the lapels.  
  


  
  
She looks like a deadly million bucks and combined, her outfit probably costs more than what he has total in any of his accounts worldwide. At this point, he's too used to, or too terrified by her idiosyncrasies to point out what any other person would, but Copley, who has less qualms and more value for materiel possessions, walks in from the other room to get his laptop, and asks, "Aren't you afraid of ruining those?"   
  
Quynh shrugs. "These are old things." _Well_. He's not going to ask what she considers new, he most likely wouldn't be able to comprehend the answer. He catches Copley's eye, shrugs at him.   
  
_Quynh_.  
  
Oblivious to them, she tugs on gloves with odd little cutouts and adjusts the earpiece covered by artfully hanging strands of her hair. Her bow and quiver are slung over her shoulder, and he hopes she'll get a chance to use them. He'll admit he's curious, each of his his - former - teammates had weapon that was _theirs_ , and this is Quynh's.  
  
And it appears Copley is curious too, from the way Booker can see he's tapping into various cameras in the target building when he sneaks a look in over his shoulder.  
  
  
  
  
  
He does get to see the bow in action, when they get in too deep and everything goes to hell. It was no one's fault, it was a fluke, one of those bitchy missteps of fate. He'll find out later from Copley that it was a collaboration of canceled flights, heavy police activity and fucking car issues that was responsible for all of their target's forces being holed up together, instead of just the two or three assholes he was counting on. Remember he said they'd have a problem with more than that? Well, yeah.  
  
Quynh had done her part wonderfully, a deadshot into their target, only a few centimeters off the mark. She's excellent, but not quite Nicky. But the target is dead, so who the fuck going to complain? Not him.  
  
He's carrying Quynh's rifle, its is purpose now fulfilled, and it's a weight on top of all the current ones. They're treed in the back of the hotel, a hallway of pissed off henchman between them and their escape route, and Copley whispering urgently in their earpieces that the authorities have been called, and to under no circumstances let themselves be caught. Copley can be somewhat of a jealous man, he doesn't want them in anyone's custody but his own.  
  
  
Booker is about to suggest they backtrack, maybe they can still slip out before the authorities show, when Quynh steps up and slips the bow off of her shoulder, knocks an arrow and draws it in a single fluid motion, and shoots the man blocking the exit through the throat. He falls, gurgling blood up, and that's the cue for both of them to run like hell.  
  
Naturally they're chased, and Booker doesn't have the time to yank a gun out before Quynh pivots on her heel to face the incomer, knocks and draws in an movement too quick for Booker to follow this time, neatly punching out the man's eye with the close-range shot. Two down. Booker sees something in his peripheral, swings around to face it and hears the _twang_ as an arrow skims directly over his shoulder and into the chest of his would-be assailant. _B on putain de seigneur_.  
  
Quynh laughs behind him.  
  
He stops trying to contribute anything to the fight when Quynh drops the fourth with a shot to the knee and then one to the head, and ducks to her knees to avoid a bullet, leveling off an arrow into the shooter's stomach.  
  
Five down. Quynh exhausts half her arrows before they get the the door, she had roughly fifteen and now has seven by the time the hall is clear. They slip out with a parting shot at a straggler from Quynh - who has six arrows now - into the night and the getaway car stationed around the corner.   
  
  
  
  
  
He watches a replay the next day when they're back at Copley's house, Quynh is a whirlwind from the view of a camera, and the bow is but a natural extension of her, she _dances_ , and it's her partner. With sudden realization he calls up Andy in his mind, slots a mental reel of her fighting alongside the video of Quynh, and watches little cracks and discrepancies in her guard and fighting style fill in.  
  
 _Oh_. It's something he would have never thought of until he saw Quynh with a bow firsthand. The Quynh in that footage was the Quynh who had fought at Andy's side so many years ago.  
  
  
With that in mind, perhaps Quynh's insistence that they train should be listened to after all. He closes his laptop and goes down to the gym, Quynh and Copley are already there, sipping fruit smoothies Copley has prepared at Quynh's behest. He asks for one, even though his opinions on them are rather dubious, and settles in to learn her routine. He's going to need all the help he can get to keep up with her.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
